Gionmatsuri　祇園祭

KEY WORD :　art history / paintings

An annual festival at Yasaka Jinja 八坂神社 and surrounding area of Kyoto, and a popular subject of Japanese genre painting *fuuzokuga 風俗画. The festival is held to honor the god *Gozu Tennou 牛頭天王 (Sk: Gavagriva), the tutelary deity of the Jetavana monastery Gionshouja 祇園精舎 in India and god of good health. In 869, to bring relief from an epidemic, a portable shrine and 66 tall spears hoko 鉾 representing the provinces were carried to a pond south of the Imperial Palace ground, and dipped in as supplication to halt the plague. By the late 10c the festival had become an annual event sponsored by the shrine and was held on the 14th day of the Sixth month. Canceled during the Ounin 応仁 war (1467-77) and the following decades, the Gion festival was revived by merchants and townspeople in the 16c, who built and maintained floats that expressed pride in their neighbourhoods and professions. Currently held in July, events span the entire month but climax on the seventeenth with a parade of wheeled yamaboko 山鉾 (floats with spear-like poles) filled with musicians playing the distinctive gion bayashi 祇園囃子 music and the smaller yama 山 floats, originally carried, displaying life-size images of famous historical and legendary figures. Both the yamaboko 山鉾 and yama are usually curtained with antique or modern tapestries from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and, most frequently, silk brocade produced by the local textile industry, which are intended to display their skill and technical innovations. The Gion festival is often depicted with ample detail in *rakuchuu rakugai-zu 洛中洛外図 screens, and in screens and picture scrolls *emaki 絵巻 devoted solely to the festival, gion sairei-zu 祇園祭礼図. Since the Edo period, at festival time, it has been customary for Kyoto families in Hokomachi 鉾町 to display their gion sairei-zu screens as well as other paintings and tapestries in the front of their homes and businesses .

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